Olympic flame spending burns schools chairman
Kitimat Northern Sentinel
Oct 28 2009

The upcoming 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games have sapped so much of the provincial budget, school boards are being left out in the cold, says Coast Mountains board chairman Barry Pankhurst.

"The provincial government is cutting everybody out, except the Olympics," he told the Sentinel last week, adding he could not understand how "they can fund these trips to Greece to see flames being lit" even as school board budgets are taking "a severe kicking."…

At this month's board meeting trustees declined three financial requests, two coming from the Child Development Centre (CDC) board.

"We have sympathy for the CDC," said Pankhurst, "We just don't have the money."

One request from the CDC board involved school-to-school transportation as part of programming, the other waiving of rental fees.

Currently, the CDC board runs kindercare and out of school care at Nechako and Kildala Elementaries, as well as three-to-five-year old and infant toddler care at Kitimat City High School.

The current need involves transporting four school-aged children between Roy Wilcox Elementary to Nechako Elementary.

A request to alter the school bus schedules to allow these students to use them was made to the school board despite current policy that does not allow school bus services to transport these children.

The CDC board therefore requested the school board review their current policy….

"We have discovered that some school districts approve non-profit agencies to operate daycare or preschool in school facilities in community schools with no rental costs," she told the board.

"All Child Development services are operated on a non-profit basis and the monies we need to charge cover operating costs only."….